The Troika is leaving town... hopefully for the last time. Lead story in today's Irish Times says that its inspectors believe it will be open to the Government to wait until the new year to decide whether it should seek a post-bailout credit line. Its position is at odds with that of the Coalition, which wants to make its intentions known before the bailout ends in mid-December. Apart from that the rescue plan is to be endorsed by the international threesome today although it remains wary of unresolved problems in the banking sector and health sectors.

08:40

Most read stories on our site right now?

1. Jamie Heaslip first among equals when it comes to captaining Ireland against Samoa2. Missing ‘teenage girl’ found in Dublin identified as 25-year-old Australian3 Yasser Arafat poisoned with polonium, tests show4. State can delay until new year to decide on bailout exit, says troika5. Mary Lou sets out to wreck Enda’s digital buzz and burst his warped bubble

08:42

Good morning... I am Conor Pope and I will be serving you bite-sized portions of rolling news, random youtube clips of kittens playing with wool and whatever Twitter throws up throughout the day.

08:47

Would you like a chemistry lesson from Wikipedia? You would? Why wouldn't you....

Pay attention now.

"Polonium is a chemical element with the symbol Po and atomic number 84, discovered in 1898 by Marie Curie and Pierre Curie [it is] a rare and highly radioactive element... Applications are few, and include heaters in space probes, antistatic devices, and sources of neutrons and alpha particles. . . the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian dissident, in 2006 was announced as due to Po poisoning... [he] was probably the first person ever to die of the acute radiation effects of Po...

08:49

Palestinians have blamed Israel for the death of Yasser Arafat after Swiss forensic tests confirmed that he was poisoned to death in 2004 with radioactive polonium. Arafat’s widow, Suha, after receiving the test results yesterday, said her husband was the victim of a political assassination. “It is scientifically proved that he didn’t die a natural death and we have scientific proof that he was killed.”

Yasser Arafat had many enemies, including Palestinian and Arab rivals, but Wasel Abu Yousef, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, yesterday pointed the finger of blame at Israel.“President Arafat was the victim of an organised terrorist assassination perpetrated by Israel, which was looking to get rid of him.”

Israeli officials have categorically denied any involvement in Mr Arafat’s death, even though Israeli forces had surrounded his Ramallah Muqata headquarters for the 2½ years before he was flown to a French hospital where he died in November, 2004, aged 75, after falling into a coma. Foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the findings were “more soap opera than science”.

08:52

Greek riot police have stormed the former state television building in Athens and evicted dozens of protesters who have been there since June when the government shut the station down. Scuffles

“The government has reached such a point of delirium that it is staging a coup against itself,” said Zoe Konstantopoulou, a senior lawmaker from the leftist opposition Syriza party, who rushed to the building with other party members.“Some people will be held accountable before history and future generations,” she said.

Government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou said the early morning police operation was carried out to “apply the law and restore legality”. “(The building) was under illegal occupation,” he said in a statement.

08:53

The Halloween witches have barely stopped their shrieking and already the sounds of sleigh bells can be heard across the country as the nation’s retailers deck their halls ahead of the most wonderful – or at least the most lucrative – time of the year.

Justin Timberlake and the guy from Mumford and Sons singing The Auld Triangle?

The Coen Brothers?

Gwan, you know you want to.

09:13

The great Luke Kelly shows them how it's done.

09:28

Will the European Central Bank cut rates at its monthly meeting today?

No.

But wouldn't it be great if it did?

It does face pressure to cut them but is more likely to wait and see if a recent dive in inflation is sustained.

09:50

Well this is kind of terrifying.

The threat of meteors smashing into Earth is bigger than previously thought, according to boffins.

Scientists have been studying the meteor that exploded without warning over a Russian city last winter. Meteors about the size of the one that streaked through the sky at 67,600 kph and burst over Chelyabinsk in February - and ones even larger and more dangerous - are probably four to five times more likely to hit the planet than we thought.

Until Chelyabinsk, Nasa had looked only for space rocks about 30 metres wide and bigger, figuring there was little danger below that.

But the Russian meteor was only 19m across but burst with the force of about 40 Hiroshima-type atom bombs, scientists say. It released a shock wave that shattered thousands of windows and injured more than 1,600 people, and its flash was bright enough to temporarily blind 70 people and cause dozens of skin-peeling sunburns just after dawn in icy Russia.

The US government got a new sense of urgency after Chelyabinsy and quietly held a disaster drill earlier this year in Washington that was meant to simulate what would happen if a slightly bigger space rock threatened the East Coast.

In the early part of the drill, when it looked as if the meteor would hit just outside the nation’s capital, experts predicted 78,000 people could die. But when the mock meteor ended up in the ocean, the fake damage featured a 15m tsunami and shortages of supplies along the East Coast, according to an after-action report.

10:00

There are no journalists in our newsroom right now. They are all preening themselves ahead of the NNI awards. And good luck to them!

The GSK Irish Medical Media Awards honoured six Irish Times journalists last night. Kitty Holland received the Story of the Year Award for her report on the death of Savita Halappanavar.

Carl O’Brien, Bryan O’Brien and Paul Scott received the Digital Media Award for ‘After the Asylum’, a project examining community mental health services through the experiences of three people. The Consumer Print Media Award was jointly awarded to Paul Cullen and Martin Wall for their coverage of the controversy surrounding the location of primary care centres after Minister for Health James Reilly added two locations in his constituency to a HSE list of chosen centres.

At the Realex Fire Irish Web Awards, The Irish Times was named best online publication. This is the fifth time it has won this award. Well done to everyone involved!

The NNI Awards take place this afternoon in the Four Seasons Hotel. 29 Irish Times journalists have been nominated

10:31

An odd way to illustrate this story. Beats a man drinking a pint of Plain though.

10:43

Dublin is losing the battle against dog waste with almost 40 per cent of dog owners admitting to not cleaning up after their pets. A Millward Brown survey has found that two-thirds of the 400 people surveyed said they thought there was a dog fouling problem in the city. Almost half of all those surveyed, and more than half of dog owners questioned, thought the problem was getting worse. Despite this, dog owners remain reluctant to pick up their pet’s waste.

" Ireland has successfully concluded the 12th and final review mission of the Programme with the EU Commission, the ECB and the IMF. This represents a significant milestone on Ireland recovery. In line with each of the previous quarterly missions Ireland has continued to achieve all of the targets set under our programme of assistance.

On welcoming the successful conclusion of the 12th and final review mission, Minister Noonan and Minister Howlin stated: “This is a significant day, that many thought, and some feared, would never be reached. The effort of the Irish people in working towards this goal has been unprecedented."

The European Central Bank (ECB) has cut its main interest rate to a new low of 0.25 per cent in a surprise move which will knock hundreds of euro of the annual mortgage repayments of the majority of Irish homeowners.

The surprise quarter point cut in the bank’s benchmark interest rate follows a drop in inflation to its lowest level in four years.While it is aimed at stimulating growth across the euro zone. the move will have a direct and immediate impact on hundreds of thousands of Irish mortgage holders.

For every quarter of a point the ECB lowers rates, the monthly cost of servicing a €100,000 tracker mortgage declines by about €15 so the average tracker mortgage holder with an outstanding loan of €300,000 will see monthly savings of €45 from the beginning of next month.

As a result of the move - the fifth such rate reduction in the last two years - a person with a €300,000 tracker mortgage will now pay about €225 a month less than they were paying in the autumn of 2011. This amounts to a total annual saving of €2,700.

While the cut will be automatically be passed on to tracker mortgage holders those with Standard Variable Rate (SVR) mortgages will have to wait for their individual banks to follow suit. Such a move is unlikely as banks are using SVR customers pay for loss-making tracker ones.

Results in the NNI's are coming thick and fast now. Fintan O'Toole is critic of the year, Ross O'Carroll Kelly (or Paul Howard) is columnist of the year. Jason O'Brien of the Indo won foreign correspondent of the year.

16:18

Kitty Holland news reporter of the year... Ian Kehoe business journalist of the year.